Are You Successful?

Orig: 09/17/07

Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it. – Joshua 1:7

Many people think success means acquiring great wealth and having friends who pat them on the back and say, “Man, you’ve got it made!” Others think they’ll be a success only when they’ve climbed the corporate ladder and acquired an impressive title.

Solomon, one of the wisest men who ever lived, said such goals are nonsense. He described these worldly endeavors and achievements as nothing but “vanity” (Eccl 2:11), “meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Instead, he advised us to pursue a nobler goal: to “fear God and keep his commandments” (Eccl 12:13). Being obedient to what God calls us to do, he said, is he only true measure of success.

We should not look upon obedience with dread. For most of us, obeying God’s mission for our lives does not mean a lonely life devoid of material prosperity. Success can’t be measured by sacrifice any more than by abundance. The Bible tells us that “to obey is better than sacrifice” (1Sam 15:22). Obedience doesn’t necessarily mean sacrifice; it does mean being faithful to what he as called us to do. Whose success are you striving for?

Lord, let me find joy in obedience, living the fullest when I am
Faithful to my calling and my purpose.
Monday, Week 16 – Between Sundays - Shawn Craig.



September 16
We have reached the deepest root of religious courage then we hear Saint Paul exclaim that he speaks “… not to please mortals, but to please God …” (1Th2:4). To please God – that is his criterion. Because in the last analysis everything depends on “pleasing God”, Paul is therefore free and independent of the favor of mortals; faith is therefore, not a form of adulation for him, but a preaching of the truth and consequently of true love. To please God – that is what makes Paul free. God must become a reality for us, too, must be more real to us – no! not just more real – than the things we can grasp, so that to please God can become for us a criterion that is also a final liberation from the question of success. “To please God”” can thus become the center of our life, that which sustains and guides us. When faith experiences God as a reality and pleasing God is recognized as the sustaining sheltering joy of our life, then faith makes us free. Only faith can make us truly free. These words of Saint Paul, behind which we can detect freedom, the freedom of all the great messengers of the Gospel, ask us: Have we ourselves such a faith? These, I think, are words about which we must examine our conscience: Is God a reality for us in our life? Is pleasing him a meaningful concept for me? Is God so truly present in my life that pleasing him is a criterion for me and that I am sustained by the knowledge of what is pleasing to him, even if it is not pleasing to men? Have I found the freedom of faith? Has it become a guiding force in my life? Have we the courage to undergo the struggle of faith? Paul’s words become for us, at the same time, a prayer: that God will let faith of this kind flourish in our days, in each of us, and with it the freedom and liberating power of faith; that he will give us the courage, even amid the failures of the Church, to look to him, to the Lord, whose successes ended on the Cross but which also, on that same Cross, introduced a new period of history and a new life for the world.

From: Zeitfragen und Claube, pp70-71
Co-Workers of the Truth Daily Meditations - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.